Veterans' car crashes rise after return home

Updated 2:11 am, Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Navy Chief Petty Officer Ron Charles Verdoza, who took out a chunk of his garage after a deployment overseas, says he believes he was simply unfamiliar with his cars.

Navy Chief Petty Officer Ron Charles Verdoza, who took out a chunk of his garage after a deployment overseas, says he believes he was simply unfamiliar with his cars.

Photo: HELEN L. MONTOYA, San Antonio Express-News

Veterans' car crashes rise after return home

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Navy Chief Petty Officer Ron Charles Verdoza didn't spend much time driving in Afghanistan and for good reason — Disney Drive, the main drag on Bagram Air Base, often is clogged with traffic.

“I think the speed limit was 5 or 10 miles per hour,” he said.

Back home after that tour in 2008, he took out a chunk of his garage while backing his car out. It wasn't his first fender-bender after a deployment, and statistics show it was no surprise.

A USAA report released Monday said troops back from overseas duty tours are more likely to have car accidents in the six months after their return than in the six months before deploying. The study, “Returning Warriors,” said troops of all ranks and ages had 13 percent more at-fault accidents.

The San Antonio insurance firm for military families based its study on the private passenger vehicle driving experiences of USAA members. It found that 22 percent of enlistees through E-4 had at-fault accidents. Ten percent of NCOs through E-9 had at-fault accidents after returning, while 3.5 percent of officers did.

Soldiers and Marines had far higher crash rates than sailors and airmen. Drivers with three or more deployments had 36 percent more at-fault accidents, while such incidents rose 27 percent for those with two deployments. Drivers with one deployment had a 12 percent increase.

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“Our men and women in uniform put their lives on the line when they deploy in service of this country, but they can face new threats to their safety when they come home and get behind the wheel,” said retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, president of USAA Property and Casualty Insurance Group.

Shifting from war to civilian life is a big change, Verdoza conceded, but he didn't think that caused his accidents.

“You're going through a big transition. For me, especially going from chief of a team out there to coming here — and now we're talking insurance,” said Verdoza, whose job at Bagram didn't involve driving.

He added that he believed he was simply unfamiliar with his cars.

“There's a lot more change going on than just behind the wheel, than just driving,” he said.

Retired Army Chief Master Sgt. Todd Nelson hasn't had an accident. Still, he brought home every lesson from Afghanistan, which ended with an Aug. 27, 2007, suicide bombing that blinded him in one eye.

“If you can picture being in gridlock here and then knowing the rule of thumb is to never sit next to one vehicle for more than a split second, you kind of think how would I get out of a situation like that, even in the U.S?” asked Nelson, a veteran of the 2003 Iraq invasion. “What drastic measures would I need to do to get out of that drastic situation?”

His experience underscored research by University of Minnesota Professor Erica Stern, who believes that driving behaviors learned in the war zone could be behind some accidents. Soldiers told her they often hesitated to stop at intersections and drove too fast or more slowly than the traffic around them.

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“Depending on their military assignment and time of deployment, troops may have driven slowly to be vigilant for explosives or attacks, or they may have driven very quickly to reduce their time at risk in transit,” Stern explained.

Nelson, 39, a USAA veterans' recruiter living in San Antonio, started driving five months after the blast. He became anxious when a car tried to merge in his lane, and often became furious.

While Nelson never got a ticket or had an accident, his wife didn't like it. He worked to change a mindset that had served him well in Kabul, including a wariness of compact cars favored by bombers.

“We had to drive like our lives depended on it because we really don't know out of all the stupid yellow and white Toyota Corollas which one is the bad guy, and so you have to assume that everyone is the bad guy,” he said.